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The Least You Need to Know
Vast spaces were always America’s greatest resource as well as heaviest burden; a large nation was difficult to unify and govern.
Technology played a key role in westward expansion. The McCormick reaper and Deere plow made farming the plains practical, and Morse’s telegraph made the vastness of the West less daunting.
Word for the Day
The dictionary will tell you that an emigrant is one who emigrates—that is, leaves one place to settle in another whereas an immigrant immigrates: he or she comes into a place. The emphasis is on arrival rather than departure. Be that as it may, those who made the westward trek were almost always called emigrants by their contemporaries.
Stats
Before the advent of the reaper, it took 20 hours to harvest an acre of wheat. By the time the McCormick device was fully perfected, about 1895, the same task consumed less than an hour.
Word for the Day
Telegraph literally means “distant writing,” or writing over distance. Morse’s earliest telegraph receiver actually traced out—wrote—the dots and dashes of Morse Code.
Destiny
(1846-1860)
In This Chapter
War with Mexico
The Mormon Trek
The Gold Rush of 1849
Phrases enter and exit the American language as if it were a revolving door. But one phrase, used in 1845 by New York Post editor John L. O’Sullivan to describe America’s passion for the new lands of the West, rang out loudly and in tones that echoed through-out the entire century. “It is our manifest destiny,” O’Sullivan wrote, “to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.” Under the ba
After Texas gained its independence, the United States was reluctant to accept the new-born republic’s bid for a
“Mr. Polk’s War”
Polk was moved to action. He offered Mexico $40 million for the California territory. The Mexican president not only turned down the offer, but he refused even to see President Polk’s emissary. Thus rudely rebuffed, Polk commissioned the U.S. consul at Monterey (California), Thomas O. Larkin, to organize California’s small but powerful American community into a separatist movement sympathetic to a
As far as Mexico was concerned, the independence of California merely added insult to injury. Mexico disputed with the United States the boundary of the new state of Texas. President Polk dispatched troops to Texas and, on May 13, 1846, declared war on Mexico. But even before the official declaration, Mexican forces laid siege against Fort Texas—present-day Brownsville—on May 1.
General Zachary Taylor, marching to the relief of the fort, faced 6,000 Mexican troops with a mere 2,000 Americans, but he nevertheless emerged victorious in the May 8 Battle of Palo Alto. The battle set the pattern for the rest of the conflict. Usually outnumbered, the Americans almost always outmatched the poorly led Mexican forces.
In the meantime, early in June, official U.S. action commenced against the Mexicans in California as Stephen Watts Kearny led the “Army of the West” from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to California via New Mexico. Near Santa Fe, at steep-walled Apache Canyon, New Mexico’s Governor Manuel Armijo set up an ambush to destroy Kearny’s column, but the governor’s ill-disciplined and ill-equipped troops panicked and dispersed. Kearny passed through the canyon unopposed, Santa Fe was taken, and on August 15, New Mexico was a
General Taylor attacked Monterrey (Mexico) on September 20, 1846, taking the city after a four-day siege. Taylor declined to capitalize on what he had gained and allowed Mexican forces to withdraw. In the meantime, the remarkably resilient Antonio Lopez de Santa A
By January 1847, Santa A
Scott declined the frontal attack the Mexicans expected. Instead, he sent part of his force to cut paths up either side of Cerro Gordo and attacked in a pincers movement, sending Santa A
The Mexican War ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which was ratified by the Senate on March 10, 1848. Mexico ceded to the United States New Mexico (which also included parts of the present states of Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado) and California. The Mexicans also renounced claims to Texas above the Rio Grande.